Post Pandemic Gaming. It’s a Snap, how Marvel.

Well.. I’ll be honest. Pandemic was bad for card gaming in general. We can’t go out and the kids were stuck at home as well with nothing much to do.

During the start and height of pandemic, like many others, I turned away from board game and card games and turned to video games. Why the change? This is due to lockdown forces people to stay home, so no one can make it to the social location to have some games in physical. This also create more access for people to buy games digitally via online store was something that accelerated during covid. Nobody could leave the house, so naturally that’s the easier option.

Picking a multiplayer game was easier too. There’s Destiny and also Genshin impact which was easier for friends to hang out on chatting while gaming.

That lasted a while.

Post Pandemic though, people got back into the groove of gaming physically. I got into mtg again for a few months, then the release schedule scared me away. A product release every 6-7th week? Crazeeeh. So I dropped that, then I discovered Marvel Champions by FFG. A friend decided to go in and purchase the product 2 hand and I shared the cost for the game. It’s quite a good game to play solo or coop. I’m loving it for now and will get into discussion about that game in another post.

The other card game that I actually got into, was Marvel Snap. Designed by Ben Brode being one of the lead designers.

It’s super fast paced, a complete game is done 6 rounds which is in 3-4 minutes, tops. It’s marvel themed, of course. So you have super heroes with abilities, and

The game play is simple, you a finite number of ‘mana’ / resource per turn, from 1 on turn 1 to 6 by turn 6. A deck is only 12 cards with no duplicates. There are 3 locations on the field, each location having their own effects, revealing from left to right from turn 1 to 3.

Your objective is to capture two locations with total power greater than opponents at that location. On the cards, left side is the cost in resource to play and the right, power/points to capture the location. And each heroes tends to have abilities, and it fits generally what you know of that movie/comic character. That makes the game awesome as it fits with what you know.

I can’t remember the exact deck I built when I started the game, but it was similar to this build.

The Control deck in Marvel Snap contains these cards:

• Hawkeye – Quickly becomes the most valuable 1-3 Card in Marvel Snap once you play a card in the same location after it. 
• Misty Knight – Move this card once to gain additional mobility.
• Quicksilver – For that guarantee first turn drop.
• Medusa – A solid 2cost for 5 power placed in center
• Star Lord – A good guesser for 2c = 2/5powr
• Sentinel – A good 2 cost that replaces itself. Always get warm bodies
• Punisher – With his ongoing, you can drop him earlier to a location and later will get boost stats once opponents drop more cards in his location.
• Cyclops – Replaceable with Colossus once you get it
• Iron Man – A good way to boost your location total power by double
• Abomination – Commits a strong force to a location
• Hulk – Brute 12 Force there to swing power to your side if you play it right.

It’s a decent deck with the beginning pool. There a few more decently good builds for beginning games.

That’s it for now, will drop by with more stuff later.

Almost 4 years…

The last post was 2019, Aug 8. If I had waited for another 8 days, it would have been 4 years since that last post.

Well, Covid hits and the world is never quite the same. Hobbies have changed, card games are never the same again. Environment wise, people are more inclined to play online like Marvel Snap or MTG Arena.

Will be back in a day or two to collect my thoughts and post more on what gaming are some of us up to. Later

The Angry Bird of L5R?

I managed to finally get my 3x core set. I got only one during the launch event, so now that I have 3, time to build competitive decks.

Although 3x core gives a good spread, I do find as usual, only core set is lacking in certain versatility per clan. So you can get at most 1-2 good decks per clan. Unless you’re tier 1 clan, so you may have 2-3 options.

Tier 1 for now? I would say it’s

• Lion
• Crane
• Scorpion

In that order. Why so? Crane and Scorpion has the cancel/negate cards while Lion has damn good synergy and they bring back peeps from discard pile. That act alone allows them to retain the numbers. And lion have that action card when they break a province, all bushi in that battlefield will gain a fate token. That swings the army by a huge sum.

That makes lion fearsome for now.

The other worrisome news was that Cycle 1 of chapter packs, instead of monthly release, they release all one shot over 6 weeks, 1 chapter packs per week. I honestly like the idea of getting 120 cards in playset in a go. The only issue is how far in-between cycles do we have the downtime.

Anything below 3 months is too short… while near 6 months is too long if the metagame goes stale. They will need to balance it.

Anyway, I’m tinkering for decklist but being a Phoenix Clan Loyalist like me. Only Phoenix decks will do. Although I may post other clan decks that I find have interesting concepts but that will probably start cycle 2 onwards when we have more card diversity.

Well, I build a phoenix deck first… and we see how it goes few more games down the line.

After hiatus… L5R is returning

FFG L5R is approaching… the reviews have been kind of interesting so far. And I think that most AEG L5R players are keeping an eye on it simply coz they love the game.. .and being LCG, it would be cheaper on a player’s wallet.. which is a major point these days. So far we have seen some basic cards and somewhat preview of the crane and lion… just have to wait for the rest. Expected to have a release of sorts at Gencon. We will get more reviews then I suppose.

I’ll probably grab 3x core (For complete playset), but anymore will depend on the playerbase locally. More people means I can get invested in to the game while if less players… well… I’ll just keep the 3x core for nostalgia’s sake. Check out the current preview at L5R at FB, or go to FFG website for more details.

On a sidenote… these are the ccg/lcg games I play on daily basis.

Shadowverse – Daily login for rewards and buy a pack for the every 100g. (Time spent is 5 minutes at most)
Hearthstone – Complete the dailies. Get more gold and buy latest expansion. Dust the spares (Depends on nature quest, between 15 to 30 minutes, if the quest is too annoying, i will reroll or try again tomorrow to reroll. )
Mabinogi – Login for gem reward.. buy packs. fight a friend to get more gems for quest. (I spend more time here to get gems.. so 30 to an hour a day)

So looking at it, it seems I’m less of player these days.. but more to looking forward to crack packs only. For free!

I know Gwent beta is out… but I’m just too lazy to play it on a pc and would rather just wait for the mobile version.

I should start to try to get HearthStone to top spot legend one of these days…

Finally some MSG legendaries….

I have opened 30 packs so far. Plus the six packs from quest given from gadgetzan bonus. Opened an Ava from the first and was dry for the next 35 packs… 

Until yesterday. Then again this morning another legendary from one more pack….nice.. Although sucky legendary.

Don Hancho…. 

Madam Goya…..

Specific legend looks like. Looks like my Kazakhs needs to be crafted 

But looks like dry run for another 35-40 packs….. I think I will just craft the important missing legendary… 

Jaded HS Player… I mean Druid

Post Gadgetzan release, you can see that top tier decks shaping up. Currently at the top tier, seems to be:
Tier 1 – Pirate Warrior (Kaizoku), Aggro Shaman with Weapons.
Tier 2 – Renolock, Dragon Priest, Dragon Warrior, Reno lock/mage, Jade Shaman
There are other decent decks at the other range, but these decks seems to be top tier. I’m still missing a few of the good rares for the top tier… like Kazakus & Kun… heck I dont have Aviana to build that particular deck… Pirate deck I’m only missing a few cards.. Patches being one of them…

But somehow, I stubbornly decided to stick to Jade Druid. It didnt do too well frankly, not bad.. but fail to push me over to rank 10 and above. It’s lacking speed… when you compare with the tier 1 and the annoyingness of Reno decks in terms of long term heal.

I love the druid deck though.. highest jade minion was 16/16. The deck i would say midgame to late game is solid… although a bit lacking on the taunt… which is one of the issue and i think the current rush aggro decks are simply damn fast.

Oh well, I still have fun with the deck, so i play casual more often nowadays compared to ranked. Looks like arena is the best bet until the rotation crops up in April.

Until then, just grind the dailies for the packs. I still dont have a complete playset of cards for any expansions…. thankfully managed to get all common and rares complete playset so far…. so its the epic and legendaries that’s lacking.

Till then.

HS – Tavern Brawl – Clockwork Card Dealer (7th July 2016)

Tavern Brawl – Clockwork Card Dealer  (7th July 2016)

Tinkertown gnomes are testing their prototype card-bot: Optimotron! The card you draw on turn 1 will be a 1-cost card, if you have one. On turn 2, a 2-cost card…….

Conditions:

* Wild Format
* Mana starts at 1

* Make your own deck from own cardpool

* Every draw step, deck will draw a card with same mana cost as current mana crystal pool. If there’s no such exact drop, then a card will be randomly drawn.

Personal Findings based on own games

* Paladin leads the pack with good combination. A well timed Steward of Darkshire + Stand Against Darkness & Drop Stormwind Champion usually drops the opponent in most cases
* A few good combos out there, but i lost interest after winning a pack as I dont have many Wild format cards so my interest dwindles.

But the winning pack i cracked? Win for me. 

All in all another random tavern brawl as always…

HS – Tavern Brawl Shiftcon (30th June 2016)

Tavern Brawl – Shiftcon (30^th June 2016)

Swap stories with fellow shifters at the tavern’s Shift Convention! Choose a class. We’ll fill your deck with Shifters and spells!

Conditions:

• Wild format
• Starts with 3 mana
• Choose one class, they will add 5-10 (estimate) your class random spells to your deck and the rest filled with Shifter Zerus

 

Personal Findings based on own games

• Found many good combos to play next turn, only to realise that combo no longer there as Shifter Zerus changed to another dude.
• There was a game where I pull off 3 Kel’thuzad. Needless to say that opponent got very annoyed and conceded.
• Spell “Mindgames” is useless as the only minion in opponent deck is a Zerus. So you copy from his deck and put into battlefield… For 4 mana get a 1/1…. urgh.
• Giant Sand Worm is the bomb. When opponent have minions with low attack, you generally can clear board on that turn.
• RNG can really screw you over, had a match where opponent get bombs and i get small normal common minions. FML.
• Any effect that refer to higher cost minion in deck versus the opponent will fail as both will be Zerus. Unless they pull their class card.
• It’s good to hear Leeroy Jenkins battlecry again. J
• If you’re a mage and you got Acidmaw, more power to you.
• Most people play this and quit, but I just take the opportunity to raise up my son’s account level to all class level 10.
• Plus side, every 3 wins is 10 gold coins…. No loss there..

All in all another random tavern brawl as always…

Doomed Town and a Game of Hearthrones.

It’s been months (definitely felt like years) since my last update. The reason I returned for today was the news that Doomtown Reloaded is being cut loose.

Seriously AEG? That’s the second game in recent they abandoned. I understand that people have been saying that AEG is moving away from card games and moving in another direction as a board games business. Well, I wont begrudge their business decision I suppose, but I hardly play much board game, so adios AEG and good luck on your new venture.

I will probably catch up on all the Doomtown reloaded I missed since Dec 2015, but shouldnt be too many and with the game closure, I probably can get it cheaper. Just going to complete the collection and shove it to one corner of the room for memories of the good times…. Unlike most of my L5R cards which I have donated to Jigoku.

If you have been following Game of Thrones tv series, you know that the latest season is some good stuff going on. It’s uncharted territory, since the books have not been released yet… So they can tangent all they want. Makes you wonder how canon the series is compared to the novel once it releases…….. if it ever gets released……..eventually…… maybe….

On the LCG front, we had a store championship for AGOT last month. I couldnt make it to the second day, so i just showed up to have a few games for the fun. Letting my opponent win since I might as well push them up.

AGOT meta right now is of course, heavier on Stark and Lannisters dominance. But having said that, the local store championship actually had each faction on the top 8. So while the game is leaning to a few faction for strength, the rest are not exactly kicked to the ground. They can hold their own of sorts. Of course, being a Loyal to Baratheon and Night Watch, I had to go with Baratheon for more consistency… Night Watch can do decent, but that plot First Snow really throws a curveball. Hard to recover from that when the Lanni pulls it off and comes swinging with triumvirate, Tyrion / Tywin / Mountain. I hope that the dominance does not last as long but we will see.

Time is usually an issue for me to go card gaming these days. There’s always things to be done and the kids are growing so fast. Due to needed cardboard crack… and mtgo being on a windows based pc making it unaccessible for me. I use linux mint and ipad for most of my daily stuff. So I returned to Hearthstone on the ipad.

Thanks to the new rotation of standard, (which is base set, classic and last 2 years of expansion). This makes the sets to chase are smaller and blizzard being smart by giving 13 packs for free of the new expansion…Whispers of the old gods… released April 26th…. so yeah…. i mean what card game addict can resist free packs?

I got back in with Hearthstone… and yeah, being able to pick up games anytime and anywhere is damn good. This is because they were being smart by making the game playable on Mac / Windows PC / Ios / Android devices…. what games runs on most of the major platforms?? Almost none i tell you. All they need is to migrate to Xbox & PS4, and their infiltration would be complete.

So the game being mostly pvp centric…… I noticed that even with mostly base cards alone, you can stand a fighting chance somewhat… You wont be winning consistently, but you wont lose all games either.

So tips for mostly casual players? Get all your characters to level 10 to open up all the base cards. Then raise a character to level 20 to access tavern brawl.

To get most value out of the game, you probably need to go to arena, paying 150g. Arena is where you get to draft by cards to fill your 30 card deck, (the cards are not from your collection, so you can get anything). Once drafted, you play the game against an opponent. If you lose 3 games, you are out. … the more you win, the more you gain.

If you get 0-3. You still get a pack and 25g. So your loss is 25g.
If you get 3-3, you get a pack, 50g, so you just pay for a pack essentially.
At 7-3, you get a pack, a random card or two and 166g. So this is where you profit, so you fully regain your entry fee and get a pack.
If you get max 12-3, you get packs, more cards and 350g.

That’s for the arena… but if you’re not, like my son. You just need to do these instead:

1) Daily quest – get gold.
2) Play ranked games. Every 3 wins get 10g.
3) Tavern Brawl. Win once a week to get a pack.

So with this, you can get by slowly with packs. It will take a while, but any cards you dont need you can always disenchant into dust and craft cards you actually need. More on that later.

That’s all from me for now…

C’thun!

June.. another time flies post.

This blog has been a rather once in a blue moon of late.

My gaming has mostly shifted platform to console gaming I would think. Some of them still maintains ccg/miniature gaming.. but me? Mostly console.

Destiny
Yes, I’m still on Destiny. The group is still there… so I maintain playing because of the gang. Decent folks, so it’s quite fun to hang out and chat after a long day at work. Would be nicer if I could head out for a drink and all, but having kids at home makes taht difficult. (Not just me, some of the guys have kids too).

House of Wolves have been somewhat boring for me. I never really got much into PVP, so trials of osiris never had much pull for me. Prison of Elders is a mixed bag. In the end, I only do PoE 32 & 24 every week for every toon, since get armor/weapon core and also Ehteric Lights. PoE 35 is just too time consuming and a pain in the arse for me… so it’s a no go.

Having seen the selection of weapons for House of Wolves… Only trails of osiris is nice, due to Elements primary… but other than that… nothing much to look forward to. I just decided to get more ehteric to upgrade my raid weapons… like Fatebringer, Found Verdict, Preadyth’s Revenge and Hunger of Crota.

Most of the queen’s weapons suck mainly.. so i just keep one each for now… the only good thing about them is that you may reforging whenever you like.

Crucible is also broken. Only a few weapons dominate the game.. so the rest are mostly unusable… so no point trying to raise the other waepons… everywhere you see.. Thorn THorn Thorn… that gun should be nerfed if only to allow more variety of waepons in the environment.

Other games that i do run now is Witcher3… which is fantastic, but solo game.. and also Dragon Age Inquisition.. both multiplayer and solo….

Doomtown

I got into Doomtown a bit the other day. I like the fast paced game, poker aspects and also deck building the game is awesome. It’s very versatile in a way due to the requirement of cards being unique once in play for each side. So that means you dont to stack the holding/peep/weapons 4x of cards… since they are dead cards in play if you already have a copy… worst yet, if that dude gets aced, then you can no longer bring any more new copies into play….. GG.

Its overdue, but i should write a bit about doomtown … maybe another post.